Town In a Lobster Stew Read Online Free PDF Page B

it belonged to me anyway, since he made it for me, and I was the first person to taste it.”
    “You used the recipe yourself to win the cook-off, right?”
    “Oh yes, but only with Mr. Sedley’s blessing. In fact, it was his suggestion.”
    “And you won six more times with it?”
    Wilma Mae nodded. “As I said, Mr. Sedley won seven consecutive times. So after I won six, I stopped entering, so I wouldn’t win more than he had. When I retired from the cook-off, I carefully hid the recipe away where no one could find it, until either Mr. Sedley or I decided what to do with it. We’ve talked about passing it on to someone, but we still haven’t decided who should receive it.”
    Candy brought the conversation back to where it had started. “And now the recipe’s been stolen?”
    The color in Wilma Mae’s face faded, and she pursed her lips sadly. “Yes.” For a moment she seemed on the verge of tears. Then, abruptly, she slapped her knees and rose. “And we’re going to get it back, aren’t we?” She pointed toward the ceiling. “Come with me. It’s time we investigated the scene of the crime.”

FOUR

    Taking Candy by the hand, Wilma Mae led the way out of the living room, into the hallway, and up the staircase. She talked as she went.
    “This house was built about eighty-five years ago by an architect named John Patrick Mulroy, who used to work out of Portland with John Calvin Stevens and Francis Fassett before he opened his own office in Bangor around 1890. Later, when he was in his sixties, he retired here to Cape Willington and designed several homes in town, including this one. It’s one of his simpler designs, as he built it inexpensively for a friend of his. Still, it has some lovely angles. Like many of his contemporaries, Mulroy had an affinity for the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, and you can see that in certain areas of the home.”
    At the top of the stairs Wilma Mae headed left and entered the front bedroom. She stopped in the center of the room and turned toward Candy.
    “He also,” she said dramatically, raising a finger, “had a predilection for creating secret hiding places in the homes he built.”
    “Ooh.” Candy’s eyebrows rose in interest. “That sounds like it would make a good story for the newspaper. So there’s a secret hiding place up here?”
    “There is! Can you guess where it is?”
    Candy scanned the room, trying to find a likely spot. To her left was a twin poster bed with a white coverlet, and beside it a forty-year-old sewing machine on an antique table. A fairly new chocolate brown wing chair and an antique floor lamp occupied the far corner, toward the street. In front of Candy, between two tall windows, stood another dark wood and glass cabinet displaying more ketchup bottles.
    But the most impressive feature of the room was to Candy’s right. Built-in shelves and drawers, bracketed between corner cupboards, occupied the entire wall. Some older books were neatly arranged on a few of the upper shelves, but mostly ketchup bottles of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages occupied the myriad shelves, nooks, and crannies. There must be hundreds of them , Candy realized, impressed with the extensiveness of the collection.
    She took one more quick look around the room, then turned back to Wilma Mae. “I’d say it’s either in that cabinet or in these shelves over here.”
    Wilma Mae nodded approvingly and motioned toward the shelves. “You’ve hit right on it. Mulroy had an affinity for built-in drawers, cupboards, and shelves,” she explained. “He worked with one of the local cabinetmakers to create built-ins like these in many of the homes he designed here at Cape. It was one of the things that originally attracted me and Mr. Wendell to this home. When we moved in, some of the shelves needed repair, so we brought in a carpenter. He’s the one who discovered the secret hiding spot. There’s actually a hidden drawer—a document box it’s called,